Media Talk: Conscripts for the 1%

Talking about the media is a thorny issue, yet it must be done to protect our democracy. Both John Dewey and Ben Franklin, great thinkers if not great men, believe that community dialogue is an integral part of developing a healthily informed society. Yet today, one must ask, to what extent does that actually take place?

We already know the obviously bad parts. We see how people are addicted to Facebook from an early age, and that all that matters to them is how they look to their friends, and how popular they can become. Both Facebook and Twitter’s owners have become fabulously wealthy by stealing ideas and information that either do not rightly belong to them, selling the information for more data-mining, or keeping people caught in a cage of their own making where they are doused with ads tempting them to indulge.

Everyone who is anyone flees CNN and Fox News for better information somewhere else; even print newspapers or alternative media is generally better.

Yet how much of all mass media, including many in alternative mass media, are compromised?

Maybe we do realize, but it’s hard to parse out just how. Or course we know, so why bring it up?

Because certain minorities, particularly AAPI, suffer from routine underexposure and deliberately so by design from the megacorporations to the technocrats. It is as if they sat themselves down in a special boardroom whose agenda specifically said something like, “We know how smart and talented they really are. So we have to discourage them however we can. We will even invade alternative media just to gaslight them.” The example they will point to among themselves of how horrible Asians are is because of how they are taking over the world, so they must be surveilled and controlled or led by Manchurian candidates.

The sad part is that however they try to limit our reach, it eludes them anyway: it is because in the chiliocosmos, there are particles within particles down through the nth-dimension level which we will never be able to perceive. It is just as in the galaxies and outer universes, only special beings can transcend our human form, and hopefully translate its beauty for us to appreciate. There are billions of galaxies, so ought we not become humbled in having a chance to play our role in making this human world a better place?

There are demons upon demons in those universes too, but without a doubt the angels far surpass them in number. The world, both mass and alt-media, are too readily captured by the bad ones though. These are the ones who want to foment death, destruction, starvation, suffering, ignorance, apathy, and many other negative qualities. This is why its important to become aware of potentially unreliable information, which is generally how the hard left corrals the left.

Because of the concern of false accusations, we will use food analogies. If you feel bad after reading this, you can either get doped up on bad baked goods, or do some meditation…

1. One of the most disconcerting ways is how the alt-left party lacks transparency in its leadership, yet positions itself time and again to speak through self-selected spokespersons. The familiar same grasstops leaders monopolize speakerships, sit on, for example, Cuban boards, and spin deals with bigger Party players. Notable examples are also astroturfing organizations that lead invariably back to one of the two main political parties. It’s like discovering that your expensive bottled water is not any different from recycled stool-free water…

2. Under the umbrella of Old Time Liberalism or Traditional GOP, it’s very hard to spot any Asian faces whether as politicians, candidates, spokespersons, journalists, or organizers. They just don’t place many AAPI in those organizations maybe because they were all hired from your political science professor’s favorite Facebook group. There is a lot of unabashed cliquishness, backclapping, and glad-handing if you are part of the in-crowd, just like we see among the junior Congress members. This kind of partyism is replicated right on down the pipeline now, as if the trait of a highly successful organization is party-run. It’s like being only allowed to drink Folgers coffee 24/7.

3. The organizational structure is strictly hierarchical, never mind if the cause is democracy or socialism. It’s not really a people-centered party one would think if there is such a level of opacity that only those within the leadership oligarchy, not necessarily based on merit, purports to be the socialist alternative. Maybe it’s more like a cult, and there are those around, whose leaders espouse non-sense and basically masquerade as something other than what their core has become, which is sort of unspeakable and bestial and lewd. It’s like being forced to eat synthetic-meat tinctured with grubworms, meal-worms, and other mystery-ingredients: Vegan Not!

4. Dialectical framing used to promote cognitive dissonance. There are many tricks of the trade used to basically restrict AAPI from publishing about anything except identity politics (Stop Hate, LGBTQ, family feud, model minority, angsting over friends, and food). If you stick with identity politics and are into food, you can become a successful food-channel owner on YouTube (the competition is growing by the year). After a number of unreasonable rejections, AAPI realize they are not really allowed to publish in the United States unless they have a PEN Award (membership restricted). Closed loops in news media, joining think tanks, trade magazines…even various online alt-news websites use second-tier syndication. While they assure you it’s because they worked hard and suffered so much…If you like ordering veggie burritos, it’s still like being served salted fish wrap instead.

5. Ownership of Issues is perpetuated in the 1980s style of group-organizing among the alt-left. It is as if the leaders cannot rest in the belief that their members are self-educated, can read books on their own, explore the treasure trove available on the internet, or represent anything beyond useful idiots at rallies and demonstrations. In fact, one particular judgment call any seasoned journalist notices is that in the United States, the anti-war NGOs play a role in suppressing activism during the years that a Democrat is in the White House. In contrast, under a Republican president, more large anti-war marches are held nation-wide, sometimes even several times a year. At a recent UNAC meeting, leaders even acknowledged that there is “internal division” over whether or not to protest U.S. support for war in Ukraine. Why? Hint: NGOs hand over support to Bernie Sanders, who hands it over to the DNC. Whether it is for financial gain, control of the hard-left political machine, or fine-tuning of the echo chamber, the technocrats also help to weed out alternative-alternate-subaltern voices. For a foodie, it’s like the guarantee of non-GMO when the supply line of all the product ingredients are already tainted by various questionable bioengineered substances.

6. Establishing hardlines. Many independents (who are now a sizeable percentage of the under-fifty voters) note that the leftists are not only vascillating in their anti-war efforts but it’s because they have settled for all the “Butter” that this administration is offering, even if he is also offering to take away all the “guns” in the United States. (In contrast the “Guns and Butter” meme is run the opposite direction right now in Europe, which is that they are furnished quite a lot of armaments while forcing energy-and-trade-sanctioning policies). By having a syndicated control of alternative media, it guarantees more repetition, more of an echo-chamber in discussion, and establishment of correctness lines which the invisible dare not cross. Maybe it’s like if you lived in Mussolini’s Italy and as seen in the movie, “The Bicycle Thief,” you are lucky to get one small cheese pizza to eat and share with your son.

7. Disengagement for dysfunctionalism’s sake. As the graphic “Exclusive Disengagement” depicts, alternative media does gaslight the public. They like to quote authoritatively from respectable mainstream media (New York Times, Washington Post, etc) and the Ivy-League academians, while presumably offering different perspectives. The message between the lines is: We don’t cross-reference from alternative media peers or self-appointed experts, no matter that we are acclaimed socialist-leaning. The contradiction in practice extends to citing from Stew Peters Red Voice Media or Canada’s Rebel News media group. The irony here is that while Red Voice and USA Watchdog will occasionally crosspost leftist grasstops authors, the reverse is much less common. Leftist NGO media websites rarely if ever reprint journalism articles penned by right-leaning authors, as if they cannot want to give them credit for exposing the issues and/or doing tough investigative research. Of course it shouldn’t surprise AAPI authors who are already heavily censored unless they meet the “extra stringent” screws developed just for the model minority. But that they will censor Republicans even when they are on the same side on the issues, such as peace for Ukraine, is such blatant rank-and-file hypocrisy that it will not be missed by voters. Again, it’s like being told that home-grown Ethiopian coffee beans just can’t make a good roast…

How you are not being encouraged to think independently

8. Living inside the box. So along with exclusivity to provide the illusion that there are only a few credible sources for the issue especially when credibility can be politicized, there is the equally disconcerting patronizing talkdown of some on the hard-left. Nobody who is socialist can ever escape being told they should join a “book discussion group” or a “Trotskyite study group” in order to start sounding like a news-cap wearing Socialist from the 1920s with precious mouthfuls of abstract jargon and person-of-steel attitude. Being stuck studying the issue for months on end while the war is ongoing is a questionable cause and of perhaps detrimental irrelevance. It’s like being asked to predict the ending of an operation by having the surgeon pull out some medical papers to read in the middle of the surgery itself. Of course for all intensive purposes, it does keep up a sense of busyness, and participants can even fog outsiders and potential watchdog reporters with their academic readiness; however all of that may be beside the point? It’s like asking for tea and being served a martini…

9. Jingoism is one of the telling signs that the organization might not be all it seems. A lot of name-dropping, outright boasting, conceitedness is pretty much characteristic of Easterners (people who grow up on the East coast of the USA) and this is no surprise as it was Mark Twain himself who recorded such in his book, The Gilded Age. The term “Yankee” developed undoubtedly associated with the marvelous can-do attitude characteristic of Sister Carrie‘s drummer, a fast-talking superficial salesman. By emphasizing the success meme of materialism, narcissism, and entitlement, successful mashers can hookwink their followers to become groupies, while effectively fence-sitting, gate-keeping, or factionalizing those who represent serious contenders. Talented vloggers and bloggers are sidelined, while focusing on self-aggrandizement and influence-peddling. Those targeted for sidelining, for exclusion, for silencing are held up in the manner of pillory while attempting to perpetuate cronyism among their favorites, and even corrupting select young leaders by lionizing them. This would be akin to being forced to eat all that you can at the mess hall in about 5-minutes, then as in Basic Training, being sent back outside and forced to do 40 pushups.

10. Secret backdoors. Because of the opacity of the financial slushbucket and leadership structure in many of these leftist think tanks, it is also a wide open possibility, as Brendon L. O’Connell has mentioned time and again in his podcasts, that many of the IT personnel may hold dual citizenship, such as both in Israel and the United States. With dual citizenship, as Yuval Noah Harari has suggested in his World Economic Forum presentations, the information technocrats can conduct extensive data-mining operations to advance the age of global Transhumanism. He knows the billionaires see the massive human populus as nothing more than useless eaters, but that those who are willing minions, such as the IT technocrats, will be able to live the better life of the Levites as depicted in Orwell’s 1984 novel. Grasstops and reactionary media can enable backdoors on petitions, mailing lists, contact information, membership lists, and those who even want to “download the app.” This is why the panopticon, the society as a tower where each has a balcony to spy on one’s neighbor, and where all that is seen and done and takes place is as if seen through glass walls, is a fitting metaphor for what “smart cities” are becoming. As far as food goes, I can’t think of anything more tasteless besides being served a bowl of “plastic rice”—a hidden specialty in the Far East now.

Anyway this is it for now, since many of the alt-media are also screaming about censorship, shadow-banning, algorithms written to generate banal results, changing the internet. Since 2009, many of the old blogs this reporter once accessed for her English thesis are now no longer available. The Internet technocrats have instead promoted shorter, superficial search results for “rhetorical devices” than what used to be available. It may also be a function of not being at a university library where the Internet is faster and probably fine-tuned for better quality results for competitiveness with JSTOR. But the real question of the moment is, when the professor retires and his trove of learning online is no longer available, who has a copy? This is why the push to force professors to develop online courses and teach at Coursera is pretty much like feeding the monster. But that is a dead ringer on the real issue right now, which is War and Peace, with World War III being an exciting possibility unless our country begins to wake up.

This is an op-ed by Christine H. Wong, so it’s not the general opinion of all AAPI, who hopefully will be recast in wonderful new roles at Popular Resistance, Green Party USA, Code Pink, World Beyond War, the United National Anti-War Coalition, ANSWER Coalition, and more frequently published at Counter-Currents, Mint Press News, AntiWar.com, Consortium News, Greanville Post, even Epoch Times, and whereever else their little heart desires (besides ColorLines or LA Progressive). Don’t forget: you can email me and have your article published here too!